Nonfiction book as network and Web 2.0 project

Pulse is a networked book, and an example of Web 2.0 storytelling.  It's a nonfiction book exploring how nonbiological systems learn from biological ones.  You can buy the print version from FSG.

Looking at its distributed nature and syndication, David Weinberger calls it a networked book.  futureofthebook has been wondering about this for a while, although Pulse is, so far, a more traditionally single-authored work.  It links out frequently, non unlike the model Web 1.0, but with an eye towards social connections.

Put another way, it's also an experiment in publishing with social microcontent.  Pulse appears in small pieces, each equipped with Technorati tags, user ratings, comments, and links for del.icio.us and digg.  The whole work has a tag cloud, tweaked for most viewed tags and recently viewed ones.  You can read it via email or RSS.  Online, the core text, which will appear on printed pages, is now combined with a social computing layer, inlcuding content generated in multiple ways by many people beyond the author.

The whole thing starts with this post.

EDITED TO ADD: the creative team wrote up a nice account of the project as Web 2.0 effort.

Comments

[Antony Van Couvering]

That's a lovely write up. Thank you. If it's of any interest, I wrote up the project from a "Web Tools 2.0" perspective here:

http://www.namesatwork.com/blog/2006/04/12/web-tools-20/

Antony

[Gardner]

Quick scan of the site reveals that this is a must-read. Thanks for the link. The "Web 2.0" explanation is especially interesting, both as an inventory of the process/materials and an entry in the "What is Web 2.0?" discourse.

Extremely valuable. Did I say thanks already?

[Gardner]

One more comment, Bryan. I'm beginning to understand that part of our ongoing discussion of whether podcasts and such are truly interactive has to do with whether the authorship is individual or collective. This insight, if it's correct, bears more thought on my part, but for now I'd simply say that the social networking "layer" here is not unlike the "nest" I identify as the publicly interactive dimension of the "In Our Time" podcast.

Perhaps we need to discuss the idea of private interaction vs. public interaction. Habermas may come in ... or not.

[رضا]

Thank you

رضا